“He just wouldn't stop,” Pam said. “The guy wouldn't stop. He just kept fighting. He hit my husband in the head really bad several times (with the gun) and busted his head. So I got our gun and we had to shoot him.”

The Coker’s shot Yates and he was pronounced dead at the scene, reports First Coast News.

Treatment was given to the Coker’s at a nearby hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

“If we had not had a gun in our home, we would be dead,” Pam said from the hospital. “I’m convinced of that. That guy was strong and he was not going to stop. Nothing was going to stop him.”

The Cokers’ 7-year-old grandson was in the home during the home invasion. He was unharmed.

“The whole thing, it'll shake anybody up,” the Cokers’ daughter Amber Olsen said. “You never think in a million years something like this is going to happen to your family, especially your mother with your child in the house, and they protected him with their lives.”

Olsen views her parents as heroes for what they did.

“I'm sad for the person who thought they should do something like that, and I'm sad for us that we had to experience something like that,” Pam said. “It was horrible. No one wants to hurt somebody, but if you have to do it to keep from being killed, you have to do it.”

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